‘Military sources indicate that they would not be
surprised if rogue terror cells test the ceasefire in its early phases.’

Well of course. I mean, it’s
a bit unreasonable, isn’t it, to expect ‘rogue terror cells’ to honour a
cease-fire – even if they are the very terror cells supposedly party to this
agreement?

Except that of course we
have been here before. On January 18 2009, Israel’s operation Cast Lead was
halted by a ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Hamas. Two days later,
residents of a kibbutz near Gaza ran for cover as an air raid siren sounded; an
explosion was heard, but the government denied there had been an attack.

On January 28 2009, Hamas
fired a rocket towards Sderot, followed by another rocket the following day,
and then another at Ashkelon. Following that ceasefire in January 2009, it took
almost four years and more than 1000 rockets from Gaza for Israel finally to
take action when it started Operation Pillar of Defence last week.

This time, Israelis said
to each other, we have to go in and finish the job that was so shamefully left
unfinished last time. But now it looks as if history is to repeat itself. Israelis
are dismayed; polls suggest that some 70 per cent of them are against this
ceasefire. Can it really be that Netanyahu has caved?

The way this cease-fire
was reached sounded alarm bells from the get-go. It was brokered by the US
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with the driving actor apparently being her
protégé, the President of Egypt, Mohamed Morsi.

But Egypt is hardly a
neutral actor in this drama. Morsi owes allegiance to the Muslim Brotherhood --
the parent body of the very Hamas that Israel has been fighting. The
Brotherhood is pledged to wage both cultural and military jihad upon the west
in order to Islamise it.

It is the mortal enemy of
both Israel and the west. Yet the Obama administration, along with the UK and
France, actually helped put the Brotherhood into power in Egypt by helping get
rid of President Mubarak. Under Morsi, Sinai has been allowed to become a real
threat to Israel; in the past week, there were reports that Egypt was doing
nothing to prevent jihadis from all over the region from going through Sinai
into Gaza to join the war against Israel. In addition, Morsi is cosying up to
Iran. Indeed, even Obama
himself blurted out recently that

‘the U.S. would no longer consider the Egyptian
government an ally, “but we don’t consider them an enemy.”’

Hillary Clinton, moreover,
has expressed her enthusiasm for the Brotherhood as ‘moderates’. There are also claims
(which have been denied in a furious row) that her long time adviser Huma
Abedin comes from a family with Brotherhood ties; and also that the State
Department has been cosying up to the Brothers in a most alarming fashion.

In other words, this
ceasefire seems to be some kind of nightmarish joke.

At time of writing, the
details are still unclear. The text that has been released is absurdly vague. And
Netanyahu’s
remarks on the cease-fire were also studiously imprecise:

‘In a phone call I had this evening with President
Obama, I agreed with him that we should give the cease-fire a chance in order
to enable a lull in the situation and allow for the citizens of Israel to
return to routine.’

Well, ‘a lull in the
situation’ hardly sounds like he envisages this cease-fire is going to last
very long. Yet he has agreed to it. Why?

Maybe a clue lay in this bit
of his speech:

‘Under these conditions we are required to navigate
this ship, the State of Israel, wisely and responsibly while taking into
account all considerations – military and political alike. This is what a
responsible government does, and it is what we did here: we made use of our
military might while applying political considerations.

‘...As
Prime Minister, I have the responsibility, and it is the highest
responsibility, to make the right steps to ensure our security. That is what I
have done and it is what I will continue to do.’

So in deciding how best to
ensure the security of Israel he had to take into account political
considerations. That may well imply that, for all his professions of solid
support for Israel, Obama had placed him in an impossible position.

There have been rumours
that Obama made the price of his support for a Gaza ground operation acceptance
of a Palestine state in much of the West Bank. Whether or not this is so, it is
possible that in some way Obama did turn the screws on Netanyahu to force him
to accept a clearly unstable and even farcical ceasefire.

Maybe in the poker game he
is forced to play with Obama, Netanyahu has calculated that the ceasefire won’t
hold and then he’ll be justified in going back into Gaza. Or maybe he just
bottled out.

Meanwhile, Hamas is
celebrating a victory over Israel. It has not been smashed, it retains several
thousand rockets – and unless Iran is dealt with, it will continue to receive
ever more accurate and deadly missiles which it will be capable of firing at
Israel.

Netanyahu has still left
open the option of ‘severe military action’. We’ll know in the next few days and
weeks whether this is just another empty threat or not – and whether the ‘normal
routines’ that Netanyahu envisages now returning for Israel’s citizens will see
them back living in those shelters.

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Loic,
Er...

Read the Israelis' own accounts of why they withdrew the prison guards to the perimeter.

I'm afraid it was Israel broke the ceasefire on Nov 14 (again, as in March, as in 2008 etc).

The Mandate territory was split in two in 1924 with the agreement of the League of Nations (rubber stamp to British/French carve-up). Palestine west of the Jordan was legally held in trust by the Mandate Power for its inhabitants (90% Arab Muslims and Christians at the end of WW1) and, somewhat contradictorily, to facilitate a Jewish "Home". It may have been the intention of many British politicians to wink at the establishment of a Zionist state, but they had no legal basis for doing so.

Thank you for this article!
@ Teresa : Israel vacated the Gaza bank, so it is not an occupier of the Gaza bank.
@ John Edwards : Israel did not attack, it defended itself .
If the British would not have messed the Middlee East, maybe we would not be here today : original Palestine (prior to 1945) was comprised of today's Israel AND Jordan...which was given away to a tribe leader called Hussein...by the British.
Maybe the Israeli should help Hamas get more weapons, larger misisle range so that they can fire at the UK, France and teh US.
It would be "fun" to see what the actions would be...

Pretty simple really, a cease fire is called, world is watching, rockets start flying into Israel again from Gaza, then there can be no doubt about who broke the cease fire this time, especially whilst talks - if they are talking - are ongoing, and for all the vitriol aimed at Israel, even the most blinkered can see, surely, who is to blame? And that will be all the justification Israel will need to retaliate? With total and utter devastation I would have thought? Never mind the outrage that it would cause, they were ready this time. They've done it before, three times, they'll do it again if needs be.

Hamas is a terrorist organization run by leaders whose job is to export terrorism to Israel. That is why they get a pay check, that is how they get promotions, it is the career path they have chosen. A Palestinian state will not change that, their job description will remain unaltered. Any idea that these people will lay down their weapons once they have a country is not based on any evidence only wishful thinking. If you think otherwise present the evidence, present statements to that effect from Palestinian leaders.
Why can't these people stay on their side of the border and build their societies and institutions? Because they care more about destroying Israel then improving the lot of their own people.

Huma Abedin. From a family with 'brotherhood ties' and is also married to a Jew. Possibly the only Muslim woman on earth to be married to a Jew and you still seek to discredit her in the most underhand way possible.

Whilst Israel continues to build and settle its people on land intended for a Palestinian state in the West Bank Israel is an occupier and will appear the aggressor. Make genuine progress in establishing two states and opinion could change. The Hamas charter is much quoted in threads like this but the Likud charter is equally inflammatory seen from the other side, denying as it does, a Palestinian state alongside Israel. How is that not a problem?

The situation today is exactly the same as the situation before the latest Israeli attack on Gaza started except that yet more people are dead and injured. This shows the futility of military action without a political settlement of the underlying conflict. The two state settlement need to happen NOW.

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